


You Be The Weaver, I Be The Quilt

by TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fashion & Models, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Art School, Explicit Language, Fate & Destiny, Fluff, Gratuitous Descriptions Of Hands, Hurt/Comfort, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mystery, PWP: Pining Without Plot, Red String of Fate, Reincarnation, Romance, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-27 11:39:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 20,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21391537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard/pseuds/TheSwingbyJeanHonoreFragonard
Summary: Seo Changbin has been in university a year and a half.He's been loving Bang Chan for lifetimes.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Seo Changbin
Comments: 56
Kudos: 198





	1. Love it when boys stand next to each other.

“I’m not much of a pattern maker,” Seo Changbin declared, hand over his heart like he was pledging allegiance. “I’m more of a… coincidence maker.” A nervous laugh jumped out of his mouth.

“You did... decently,” said Kim Seungmin. 

“Decently,” Changbin repeated glumly. Even that much of a compliment sounded like an insult coming from Seungmin. “I see.”

“You definitely didn’t rush them.” Seungmin had laid Changbin’s dress patterns out across the long, wide table at the back of the workshop and was now looking over them with the blank faced enthusiasm of a doctor examining x-rays.

The thin, off-white sheets of the dress patterns were cut into odd shapes and dotted with Changbin’s precise angle markings and length measurements and even arrows that signaled ‘up’ and ‘down’ or ‘left’ and ‘right.’ Separated, they were nonsensical jigsaw pieces. Together, they formed the underlying structure of a garment. The foundation on top of which fashion was made. 

Seungmin traced along the edges of the patterns with his index finger as if he could assess the quality through touch alone. As he did so, Changbin couldn’t help but notice the callouses across the pads of Seungmin’s fingers, the clipped-down nails, polkadots of red pinpricks in his skin from sewing machine mishaps. Seungmin wore them like badges of honor. The younger man critiqued, “This is quite a lengthy cardigan, don’t you think? And is this severe asymmetry purposeful?” He looked up at Changbin, eyebrow raised, a jeer clearly on the tip of his tongue.

“It’s inspired by _hanboks_,” Changbin blurted out before Seungmin could say anything. “It will make more sense when the patterns are arranged—” He began to rearrange them.

“No, no,” Seungmin said, lifting a hand to stop him. “I can put it together in my head. I already know… what it’ll look like.” He clenched his jaw and turned away like he’d just bit into something bitter.

Changbin leaned over Seungmin’s arm a bit just to look at his patterns and double check his own scissor skills. Yes. Everything was in order. Everything was how he wanted it to be yet, beneath Seungmin’s gaze, Changbin found himself second guessing his design choices. Changbin responded, “I’ve already picked out the fabrics and everything. I want to line it with something simple, though, and perhaps do some custom embroidery on the sleeves.”

“Don’t get overconfident,” Seungmin said curtly. “This project is due first thing Friday.”

It was a Monday afternoon.

Late May was about to become early June and the cloudless sky and balmy temperatures had most of their classmates skipping lab hours to enjoy the fact that temperatures were finally getting and _ staying _ warm. Changbin had asked around at the end of class and most of his classmates were still finishing up their preliminary sketches or making final choices on the creative direction they were going or were headed to the other side of campus to the fabric store to try out color combinations. Overzealous Changbin was several steps ahead of his peers by already having his patterns measured and drawn and cut out, by having his fabric and thread picked out and paid for.

Kim Seungmin, though, was a step ahead of _ that _, as the dress form on the other side of the room already had a swath of blush pink fabric draped over its shoulders and pinned in place. The bare bones of another of his masterpieces.

“Just make sure you’ll have time,” said Seungmin. He stepped back from the table and pushed his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “Wouldn’t want to present yet another unfinished piece.”

“Right, right,” Changbin agreed, feeling his cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I have to better manage my time.”

Changbin had hours of measuring and cutting and pinning and sewing ahead of him. On top of the classes and lectures he had to attend this week! Perhaps he should save his more ambitious ideas for later in the semester, when they had more than a few days to complete a project. Sure, he had made ridiculous progress today by staying in the workshop for so long, sketching and flipping through his notebook of fabric swatches. But he’d have to burn the midnight oil every night of the week to be finished on time. What was he thinking? Custom embroidery! He wasn’t as fast as his mother. 

“I’ll make the proper adjustments,” he said meekly. He would need to make another trip to the fabric store. 

Seungmin smirked. “Good.”

Changbin didn’t know why he got like this around Seungmin. All lowered eyes and formal sentences and sweaty hands and racing, anxious pulse.

Seungmin was his _ classmate _ , not his design professor, but the way Seungmin carried himself just gave off the aura of someone skilled. Someone naturally gifted. Someone who needed to be respected. Someone who was practically destined to go far. Was it the coiffed hair? The patterned dress shirt with its rolled-up sleeves? The solid color silk tie with one end tucked into his front pocket? The freshly polished leather dress shoes? The punch-in-the-gut scent of his _ eau de parfum _?

Whatever it was, Changbin felt… smaller than him. But not just in terms of height. Well, he definitely felt cheaper than the man. Maybe even a little unclean in comparison. It was Monday! He’d partied Sunday evening, overslept, woke up hungover and had all of fourteen minutes to get ready and dressed for his late morning class. He was out here slumming it in an oversize pink sweater and old jeans and the same ratty, Sharpie-doodle covered pair of Converses he’d worn since high school. His socks didn’t even match!

“Changbin,” Seungmin asked. There was irritation in his voice.

Changbin hadn’t been listening. At all. “Can you repeat that?”

“It’s about to be summer. Are you really going for—” He pointed to one of the patterns on Changbin’s work table. “—long sleeves?”

Changbin nervously gripped the sleeves of his sweater. “It’s not that hot yet.” Plus, he went into the planning stages of every class project with the mindset of what he did or didn’t have in the portfolio he didn’t even need to create for another two years. Did he have enough long sleeves? Did he have enough a-line dresses? Did he have enough menswear? He didn’t care about summer or fall unless the professors made it a point for the assignment.

“Changbin,” snapped Seungmin impatiently.

Changbin had zoned out yet again. “What did you say?”

“I asked you if you were up for such a complicated design.”

That was a question Changbin wasn’t sure how to answer. Aligning the oversized sleeves would be killer and sewing the asymmetrical back of the garment without the fabric buckling would take every ounce of Changbin’s patience at the sewing machine but he was determined to do anything but do what his classmates did and go down to the student store and buy some premade patterns. His grandmother would roll in her grave. Changbin steeled his resolve, looked Seungmin in the eye and said, “I’m up for it.”

A flicker of surprise played across Seungmin’s face, as if he had been fully expecting Changbin to cower and back down. Seungmin straightened out his face quickly, though, and let out a snort before turning away to get back to his own work. “We will see,” he huffed over his shoulder. “We will see.”

⌲

Changbin finally found the library book he was after. As much time as he spent here and he still hadn’t quite mastered the depths of the classification system. He was just about to stand on his tip-toes and reach for it when Hwang Hyunjin shoved his tablet in Changbin’s face, startling him. “Which color should I pick? I’ve been agonizing over this decision since lunch.”

Changbin had to lean his head way back just to give himself enough distance for his eyes to focus. “They look exactly the same.”

“Are you blind?” Hyunjin asked incredulously, eyes wide and mouth half-open in what seemed to be disgust. “The color on the left is hexadecimal code eight five one bee double oh. The color on the right is hex code seven eff two thousand. They look _ nothing _ alike.”

“Can you be sure,” Changbin asked. He had to cross his eyes a bit with the way Hyunjin was forcing the tablet even closer to his nose. “They’re the same.”

“You’re not going to tell me they look the same when just two weeks ago you got mad at me because I couldn’t tell the difference between that blue fabric with white and gray stripes and that white fabric with gray and blue stripes.”

“They were _ totally _ different,” Changbin shouted at his roommate.

His outburst got them a curt _ shhhh! _ from the student librarian at the far end of the aisle.

Hyunjin lowered his voice to a whisper. “That anger you feel is exactly what I’m experiencing right now.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you think these look the same. I trusted you.”

Now that Changbin took a second look at the tablet screen, one of the burgundies did look a smidgen darker than the other. Only a smidgen, though. “Just pick whichever one.”

“I can’t pick whichever one. Just like you can’t pick whichever one. This is art, yo. And art’s not _ whichever one _.”

Hyunjin was a fellow sophomore. A graphic design major to Changbin’s fashion design major. They got along famously well, connecting over their common tragedies as artists struggling to hone their craft.

“Go with that one,” Changbin said, pointing at the one on the right.

That made Hyunjin pull a face. “Eww. Never. You’ve got such awful tastes.” At long last, he lowered his tablet from in front of Changbin’s face and started tapping away at the screen. “I’m going with the other one. Thanks for the input.” He started to walk away. Apparently, that was all he needed Changbin for.

Changbin rolled his eyes.

Dammit. What had he been doing? Looking for that book! Right. He glanced down at the crumpled sheet of paper in his hand and reread the barely legible title of the book and its long call number. With the numbers fresh in his mind, he looked back up at the towering bookcase in front of him and tried to find the book again. He had been looking right at it before Hyunjin had distracted him. 

Oh, he was going to lose his mind! He could go to the fabric store and not be overwhelmed by the barrage of colors and patterns and textures but staring up at shelf after shelf after shelf of books was about to do his head in.

There!

Changbin stepped forward, lifted his arm and stretched his fingertips but the shelf was a touch too high.

“Dammit. Really,” he hissed. How cliche! He knew he was short, but _ damn _. How far had Hyunjin gotten and how embarrassing would it be to call him over here to get something off the top shelf? Changbin looked right and then left but Hyunjin wasn’t in either direction. “Shit.”

He got up on his tiptoes. That gave him enough height to put his index finger on the book’s cool, smooth spine but he didn’t have the leverage to grab hold of it. He wasn’t even tall enough to get a finger under it and jimmy it over the edge of the shelf! He looked down long enough to put his worn out shoe on the bottom shelf of the bookcase and was just about to hoist himself up when he felt warmth like a midsummer breeze envelope him from behind.

It wasn’t sunlight. The time was just before sunset and the blinds were thrown open, letting in rays of hot, gold light, but this warmth was different. Soft around the edges like a blanket.

“Hyunji—” The name died on Changbin’s tongue as the heat pressed close. As it swaddled him. That wasn’t Hyunjin.

Changbin froze.

A solid, broad chest bumped against Changbin’s back. The sudden closeness alarmed him for a moment yet there was something so familiar about the feeling that he relaxed and nearly leaned backwards against whoever it was standing right behind him. There was something about this smell. He didn’t know how he knew it but he did. Something from long, long ago. Something that he’d forgotten up until that very moment. There was a tingling across Changbin’s scalp like his nerves were firing the recovered memory from his subconsciousness straight to the center of his brain. Images flickered in his head too quickly for him to truly grasp but he caught _ some _ of them. It was almost like remembering bits and pieces of a movie. Hands running through hair. Fingers trailing across skin. And all of that just from a whiff of someone’s scent.

How did Changbin know this smell? And why did it fill him with such a strong sense of nostalgia that he wanted to cry?

Changbin’s lungs burned and he finally remembered to inhale. He swallowed the library’s crisp, fresh-out-the-AC air and the sudden, sobering lucidity was like jerking awake in the middle of a pleasant dream. 

He tried to turn around but between the shelf at his front and the stranger’s chest at his back, he did not have much room to move. His hand reaching up to the top shelf was joined by someone else’s. Someone whose hands were bigger than his with a light dusting of hair across the knuckles. Changbin wanted to hold that hand. His body told him that he’d held it before. Instinctively, Changbin reached for the stranger’s wrist and he barely brushed his fingers against their skin before they quickly moved. The stranger’s hand reached the book Changbin needed, grabbed it by the spine and lowered it onto Changbin’s open, waiting palm.

Simple as that.

At long last, the heat pulled back and Changbin nearly cried out at the loss.

He spun around.

They weren’t standing half as close Changbin wanted them to be. _ Needed _ them to be.

The student who had helped him with the book was taller than him. Broader than him. Unfamiliar to him. He wore a baggy black hoodie that was made from material too thick for this weather with a black cap pulled low over their forehead, blocking the majority of their features from Changbin’s view.

Changbin dipped down a little to get a look beneath their cap. He caught just a glimpse of the stranger’s long nose, of their pink, pillowy lips and sharp chin. Of the exact shade of hazel-brown their eyes turned in the sunlight. Whoever they were, they were already turning to leave. As if helping Changbin was just a quick pit stop on their way somewhere else, the stranger didn’t even look back.

Something freezing cold grabbed hold of Changbin’s heart. So tight that he choked with what might have been a sob.

Why was he so sad? Watching this stranger walk away from him filled him with a dread he wasn’t sure he should be experiencing. It was as if he’d been in this situation before a long time ago, his heart in a million pieces and tears streaming down his face while this man just casually walked out of his life. But that… shouldn’t have been possible. Changbin had a few boyfriends and even a girlfriend or two before but he’d ended things with each of them rather amicably, all things considered. So why was his heart twisting up in knots like this? Why did it hurt so much to watch this man walk away? And why was something compelling him to follow after this _ stranger _?

He ran. Almost sprinted. Anything to close the distance.

Changbin caught up with him right as he reached the end of the aisle. Changbin grabbed the stranger by the sleeve of his hoodie. “Wait,” he called out. “Please don’t go.”

The man paused and barely acknowledged him with a tilt of his head. “What is it?” His voice was low and rough but not angry. Not mean. It was warm like the crackle of a campfire. “If you need anything else, get one of the librarians to help.”

“No. It’s not that. Just… Thanks for helping me, Chan,” Changbin said.

The man tensed but only briefly. There and gone. In a more obvious hurry now, he pulled his sleeve free from Changbin’s grip and started walking again, busying himself with the phone that had just started vibrating in his hand.

Changbin stood there feeling so mixed up, so out of sorts, that a cold sweat dampened his forehead.

Hyunjin must not have gotten as far away as Changbin thought he had. He was at Changbin’s side then, having just come around the corner. His eyes were still fixed on his tablet as he debated between two other similar yet completely different colors but that didn’t mean he hadn’t seen what had just happened. He asked, “You know him?”

Changbin almost said ‘Yes’ but that would have been ridiculous because he… didn’t. He’d never seen that man before in his life. Their school’s campus was large and the fashion design majors had the majority of their classes in the designated building on the far north end. Changbin had been here for over a year and he and that stranger had never crossed paths until today. Changbin told the truth, “No. I don’t know him at all. I’ve never met him.”

“No?” Hyunjin repeated. “Really?” He looked up from his tablet. “That’s weird, yo.”

“Why is it weird,” Changbin asked. He looked down at the book in his hands as if just remembering that he was holding onto it. It felt heavier in his grip than it probably should have. “I don’t think we’re in the same major so why is it weird that I don’t know him?”

“Did you not hear yourself back then?”

Changbin looked up at Hyunjin, confused. “What did I say?” Nothing humiliating, he hoped.

Hyunjin's eyes went wide. “You said you don’t know who he is but... you just called him by his name.”


	2. Memories come in pieces.

Changbin couldn’t stop thinking about him.

About Chan.

He had just barely touched Chan, had just barely got his fingers on the man’s skin, but the feel of him was embedded in Changbin’s nerves. The smell of him was imprinted on Changbin’s skin. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d spoken to Chan before. Laughed with him. Cried with him. Touched him. Felt him. He’d never met Chan yet he _ knew _ him.

Everything about the situation seemed impossible. Chan was just some random guy in the library, yet Changbin had known his name. Called it out! It had slipped off his tongue as if he’d said it a billion times. He’d barely gotten a good look at Chan’s face, yet Changbin knew it. Loved it. From the sleepy, downward tilt of his eyes to the tiny scar next to his mouth, Changbin knew Chan’s face as if he’d looked at it and admired it for hours. As if he’d committed every curve and acne scar and pore and ingrown hair to memory. As if the feeling of Chan was embroidered onto his soul.

Changbin thought he knew what loneliness was. He thought he knew what it felt like to be incomplete. But one brief, fleeting encounter had him feeling like he was missing half of himself.

“I brought dinner,” Hyunjin said as he swung open the door to their dorm room. His hands were full of plastic take-out bags so he kicked the door shut behind him. 

Changbin looked up at the loud sound. “Oh. You’re back already?” He sat up straight in his chair.

That tiny movement set off a chain reaction in his body. He realized how much his eyes stung from focusing so hard. He became aware of the mild headache sitting directly above his right eyebrow. The joints in his neck popped at the sudden movement. Had the television in the corner always been turned up so loud? Changbin wiped his hand over his face and was surprised when his fingertips came away damp. There were salt trails on his cheeks from tears he did not remember crying.

“What do you mean already? I’ve been gone for ages.” Hyunjin lowered his umbrella into the stand next to the door, kicked off his shoes and came into the room. His hair was long enough for him to pull it back into a low ponytail and the punk rock plaid pants he wore was quite the fashion statement. Hyunjin sat the bags of take-out down on what little bit of countertop space their kitchenette provided, humming to some tune in his head. Changbin didn’t recognize the restaurant logo on the bags so Hyunjin must have gone quite a ways off campus for the meal. “Wow,” Hyunjin exclaimed, turning around. “You literally haven’t moved since I left. It’s…” He checked the time on his phone. “It’s after midnight.”

Changbin stretched his arms above his head, popping another series of joints down his back and giving him a delightful burn through his shoulders. “Wow… I need to just… stand up for a bit.” He did so slowly. Carefully. The joints in his knees and ankles had gotten stiff and his ass was tingly and half-numb from him being so sedentary half the night. Even when he stood up, it took a while for his blood to properly circulate again. The tingle in his toes was like sticking his feet in an ice bath. “Shit,” Changbin groaned as his body rebelled against him.

“You’re right. That’s exactly what you look like,” Hyunjin commented. “Have you been crying?”

“Just focusing too hard. Haven’t had a break.” What Hyunjin had said earlier only just then hit him. It was after midnight? Last time Changbin checked, it was only five in the evening! “What did you get us? Not more flavorless Greek food, I hope.”

“There was a new Vietnamese fusion restaurant that opened up downtown. The line was wrapped around the building. I stood out there in the pouring rain for nearly two hours.”

“It rained?” Changbin questioned. He didn’t recall hearing it.

“I don’t think it hit this side of town. The grass was bone dry when I got in.” It took a minute for Hyunjin to rescue all of the plastic containers, napkins, sauce packets and cutlery from the depths of the take-out bags but when he finished laying out their meal, he glanced across the room at the table where Changbin had been sitting. “Wow… Look at what you did, though. That’s… That’s stunning.”

Changbin glanced down at the work in question. If it weren’t for the fact that his fingers and wrists were awfully sore from working the needle, he wouldn’t have even thought that he’d done it. It was scary. Almost as if someone else had laid their work in front of him. The embroidery was magnificently detailed. A gallery of flowers in the most gorgeous, vibrantly colored strings. Oranges as deep as a summer sunset. Sweet green leaves and stems. Turquoise petals. Violet petals. Red and bits of gold and sky blue. The table was covered in the mess of creation. The tools of Changbin’s trade. Sketches on scraps of paper. Reference photos. Bits of different colored threads. Spools and spools of rainbow color. Needles and pins and pencils worn down to nubs. Changbin ran his hand across the design. His rough fingers snagged on the smooth material but he could also feel every texture. It was like he was holding thorny flower stems in his hand and feeling them prick at his palm. 

The work was unreal. 

“I guess it’s okay,” Changbin mumbled in response. “My grandma was way better.”

An odd expression crossed Hyunjin’s features. He opened his mouth as if to speak but wrestled the words back down his throat. Instead, he said, “Is this for your project?”

“It… isn’t supposed to be,” Changbin realized. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again and looked down at the piece he’d been working on all night. He hadn’t intended to do anything so elaborate for the sleeves of his project. He just wanted something simple yet still personal. Enough detail to show his professor that he was capable of _ completing something _. Yet not so much detail that it would become lost on the finished product. But this design was large. Too large for the garment’s sleeves like he’d planned. “I guess I got inspired.”

Chan’s hands floated into Changbin’s mind again. He’d only seen them reach up and grab a book on the top shelf yet for some strange reason, Changbin could also recall those hands holding his own. (Bitten-down nails lovingly digging into the backs of his hands.) Or holding a brush weighed down by oil paint. (Long, thick fingers still managing to be graceful and precise.) Or gently cupping flower petals. (Softness against callouses.)

Changbin didn’t know why such images would haunt him. He had no idea if Chan knew anything about flowers. Or if he painted. And Changbin definitely had no idea how he knew how Chan’s hand felt engulfing his own.

“May I?” Hyunjin asked, but he barely waited for Changbin to respond before he approached the table and ran his own hands across the pattern. He wasn’t exactly gentle. His fingers pressed into the silk threads like he was typing away at a computer keyboard. “This is amazing, Changbin. Better than the peacock you did the other week. I can almost _ smell _ the damn things.”

“I made it for someone.” The words were out of Changbin’s mouth before his brain even sent the signal.

“Hmm? For who?” Hyunjin remembered that he had brought home food and turned away to fix himself a plate.

“For Chan,” Changbin stated. 

Another image of Chan floated in Changbin’s head but this one was of his own making. He saw silk fabric draped over hardened, scarred muscle. He saw Chan’s square face dramatically lit from the left, accentuating the high cupid’s bow of his lips. He saw his flower embroidery stretched across the width of Chan’s broad shoulders and down the length of his pale, smooth back.

“I want Chan to model my new project.”

Hyunjin wasn’t as surprised by this as Changbin thought he would be. The guy turned away from the spread of food, a smile gathering kindling at the corners of his lips. “You’ll have to find him first.”

Their campus was large. There were thousands of students on the grounds at any one time. Changbin had a morning class he was absolutely going to be too dog tired to pay attention in. He didn’t have time. He had no clue where to start. He didn’t know Chan’s schedule or hobbies. What dorm he was in or if he stayed off-campus. Changbin didn’t know Chan’s favorite color or animal or food or even his major. Yet Changbin was not about to let any of that stop him. With confidence (or was it desperation?) he declared, “I’ll find him. I know I will.” Because, _ somehow _, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he felt a pull. Like he was being drawn in a very specific direction. “I know where he is.”

Even this did not surprise Hyunjin the way Changbin thought it would. Hyunjin turned his attention back to his food. “Let’s go look for him in the morning before class.”


	3. And something inside me came to life.

Changbin didn’t find any of his brand new feelings strange until Hyunjin woke him up the next morning. 

“Yo, are you okay?” His roommate stood over him, hand on his shoulder, shaking him awake. “You were crying your eyes out. What happened?”

Changbin’s first instinct was to turn his head and look to his left as if fully expecting someone to be sleeping beneath the covers next to him. Someone Hyunjin’s shouting would surely wake up. But that was ridiculous because Changbin had never woken up next to someone. Plus his dorm bed was too small to fit more than one person and the only thing to his left was early morning sunlight spearing into the room and across the wall through the space between two cheap curtain panels. That didn’t stop him from sliding a hand out across his sheets and feeling the lack of warmth in the material. Changbin looked back up at Hyunjin with wide, unsure eyes.

Hyunjin recognized the look on his face. He used a finger to push Changbin’s sweat damp, reddish brown hair out of his eyes. “Want to talk about it?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know if there’s anything to talk about.” Well, minus the fact that he thought he was losing his mind. 

“Was it a sleep paralysis thing?”

“No,” Changbin stated. He sat up, shivering a tad as the warmth of his comforter fell away and the chill of the AC dragged over his sweaty, goosebump-marked flesh.

“Did you have a nightmare,” Hyunjin tried again. He took a few steps back and sat down on the edge of his own twin-sized bed. There was a towel draped over his long, wet hair and the only thing he wore was a navy pair of Emporio Armani boxers and cream-colored smears of body lotion that he hadn’t rubbed into his skin completely. Hyunjin must have just come back to the dorm from the showers and had heard Changbin crying in his sleep.

“I don’t… think so…?” Changbin raised a hand to his face and wiped at the damp salt trails. It was just like last night when he’d finished the embroidery. He didn’t remember crying. He had no reason to cry. Yet the tears were there. Emotions that weren’t his sat heavy in his heart. He missed someone he never met. He longed for someone he’d never been close to. “I don’t think I’m sad.” He looked to his left again and wondered why he kept expecting someone to  _ be there _ . “These might be tears of happiness.”

“What’s gotten into you,” asked Hyunjin. He resumed getting ready for class. One hand towel dried his hair. The other dug around in the messy depths beneath his bed, searching for a clean(ish) shirt. “Ever since yesterday, something’s been way off about you.”

“Really? Like how?” Changbin threw off his comforter and swung his legs over the side of his bed. He went to his dresser, opened up one of the drawers and began planning out today’s outfit. He had time to get ready so he was going to put in the effort! “I think I’ve been pretty okay.” As far as he could tell, he’d done nothing too differently from what he usually did. He was a fashion major so it wasn’t too odd that he’d lose a few hours of his night while sewing. Right?

Hyunjin disagreed. “You’ve been spacing out. I’ll ask you something and you won’t respond at all. Now you’re bawling your eyes out in your sleep and telling me they are tears of happiness.”

Okay. Now that everything was listed out, perhaps there  _ was _ something strange going on. “But I don’t feel sad,” he explained. “I have no idea why I’m crying. All of the things that I remember are sweet and maybe even a little beautiful.” Yet was he remembering something that actually happened to him or were the images in his head simply pieces of dreams? “I don’t know what it is,” Changbin said honestly, “but ever since the library yesterday, I’ve been feeling like I’m not myself.”

“Because of that guy you ran into?”

“Chan. Yeah.”

Hyunjin tossed the towel he’d been drying his hair with aside and used both hands to pull his shirt on over his head. It was black and short-sleeved with some 80s punk rock band logo screen printed on the front and tour dates Hyunjin wasn’t even alive to go to listed on the back. “Now that you bring it up again… How do you know his name?”

“I don’t know,” Changbin said honestly. “I took one look at his face and just knew it. Knew  _ him _ .” He settled on his own outfit. A tie-dye shirt with a gradient that slid from ocean blue to seafoam green to coral reef pink. He had a denim jacket he’d wear over it and a pair of pink pants to go with it. “Do you know him?”

“That guy? No. But he dresses like he listens to punk rock. Maybe we’d get along. Do you know him?”

“No. That’s what’s weird, Hyunjin.  _ How _ do I know his name? I’ve never met him before.”

“Maybe it’s a subconscious thing,” Hyunjin suggested, pulling on a pair of black leather biker pants that he’d rescued from the pile of laundry at the foot of his bed. “You probably saw his face and name somewhere before.” He sniffed at a pair of black and white checkerboard socks and since he didn’t immediately recoil, they must not have been dirty. “Is he popular on campus? Maybe he’s an RA or a student ambassador or a club president or something.”

This was truly starting to bother Changbin now. “But that doesn’t make sense. Where would I have seen him?” Chan wasn’t their building’s RA. That was Lee Minho. The same senior who told them that pets weren’t allowed in the dorm yet snuck his cat downstairs to the quad in the middle of the night to let it piss and shit on the green. “I’m positive I’ve never seen him before yet I can’t shake the feeling that we’re supposed to know each other.”

Hyunjin pulled on a pair of Doc Martens boots, one foot at a time. “Maybe you were elementary school buddies or next door neighbors or something and now you’ve been reunited after fifteen years away from each other.”

“Cute… but no.” That made even less sense. If it was something like that, then all of the fragmented memories that floated into Changbin’s head would have been of the two of them as children. But every sensation he experienced featured him and Chan as adults. He just couldn’t pinpoint  _ when _ in his life those things were supposed to have happened. “I’m going to go shower,” Changbin announced. He was exhausted of the subject already. “I’ll meet you at the cafeteria. Claim our usual table.”

⌲

After a quick breakfast, Changbin and Hyunjin had approximately eighteen minutes before they had to go their separate ways for morning classes. That meant Changbin had less time than that to find Chan.

“You said you knew where he was,” said Hyunjin with an appropriate amount of skepticism in his voice. “How?”

“Fuck if I know,” Changbin responded. “But…” He put his hand over his chest where he could feel his heart rocking back and forth like it was fitting to burst out of his chest. “I can tell that he’s close.”

It was an insane statement. 

They were on the campus’s large central quad, surrounded by the general education and administration buildings. The two of them stood in the shade of an old oak tree, sunlight shimmering in hazy dapples across their clothes. Hyunjin cupped his hands in front of him as if he could hold the sunlight there and lift its weight. “You can feel him,” Hyunjin repeated.

Changbin said, “He’s my other half.” And he meant it. He was right. Chan was left. He was the front. Chan was the back. They shouldn’t be allowed to exist separately.

“I see,” said Hyunjin, but for once, he wasn’t making fun of his friend.

On the emerald grass around them, there were dozens and dozens of students out, either killing time before class or openly preparing to skip class. A food truck was in the parking lot and the line in front of it extended halfway down the sidewalk. A miniature photoshoot was happening in front of the fountain with a group of photography students bustling about like ants in a colony as they got their models prepared. Leaning against the tree across from theirs, two students strummed acoustic guitars and one of them crooned out the lyrics to the love song with a shockingly deep and soulful voice. There was just something in the air. Inspiration breeding inspiration like it was pollen in the air. Changbin himself itched with the desire to sew. To weave strands of thread together until he’d created something wonderful. Something significant.

“God, something’s wrong with me,” Changbin finally admitted. “I have to be going crazy.”

“Would love it if you explained.”

He was going to sound absolutely batshit but… “I can’t get him out of my head. I remember things I’ve done with him that I shouldn’t remember because they haven’t happened. I know his name even though I’ve never met him. I know he has a scar between his shoulder blades even though there’s no way I should know that.” Changbin looked up at Hyunjin, fully expecting him to be primed and ready with a shit-eating grin on his face or, even worse, concern or pity.

Instead, Hyunjin looked serious. It didn’t sound like a joke at all when he said, “Maybe you knew him in a past life.”

And that sounded  _ so stupid _ but it made so much sense that Changbin instantly believed it. He’d known and loved Chan in his life before. And maybe his life before that. And maybe even his life before  _ that _ . He gasped. “He’s nearby.”

Hyunjin should have doubted Changbin’s words but he continued to be his friend’s enabler. Too intrigued to do anything but throw caution to the wind. “Where is he? In which direction? Maybe I can help point him out.”

That was the easy part. All Changbin had to do was find just a snippet of his longing and follow it to its source much like Theseus followed Ariadne’s string out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth. 

Changbin moved through his emotions and dreams and memories or whatever it was they were. Hallucinations, maybe. Of Chan laughing with him. Holding him. Making food for him. Painting for him. Joy and anger and sadness and excitement all coursed through Changbin’s veins with each pump of his heart. He kept going, following the strings, following the weavings. He heard Chan’s low voice in his ear. Felt Chan’s hand card through his hair. Felt the tight coolness of a ring slide down a finger on his left hand. Changbin followed the feelings. Deeper and deeper. It was like he was reaching across timelines. The entire world distorting itself to satisfy him. At the center of it all, he found Chan. Nothing but Chan. Changbin’s mind supplied him with the sensation of Chan kissing him so hard he was breathless. Making him so happy that he could die. Filling him so completely it was as if they were designed for each other. Crafted to fit together.

Changbin opened eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed. He let out a breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding, his lungs burning at their oxygen-deprived limit. Changbin turned around and jogged away, leaving Hyunjin. Leaving the shade of the oak tree.

“Hey,” Hyunjin shouted after him. “Wait up. Your backpack. You forgot your backpack!”

None of that mattered. The only thing that  _ did _ matter was this vacancy at his side where someone should be standing.

He pushed his way through the gathering of students outside, stepping around laughing groups of friends, dodging a pair of running freshmen, pausing long enough to allow a band carrying their woodwind instruments to pass. 

Changbin looked left and right but none of the faces near him was the one he needed to see.

This was going to drive him up the wall. He’d met Chan briefly. For only a handful of seconds! Yet he missed the man as if they’d spent every waking second of every day together. And he knew that nothing in this life would feel satisfying until he actually could spend every waking second of every day together with Chan.

By then, he’d crossed the length of the quad and had reached the double doors of one of the classroom buildings. He was just about to reach for the handle and pull the door open when it was pushed open from the other side.

He didn’t step away fast enough.

Something solid collided with him. Enough force behind it to knock him backwards.

Changbin lost his balance. His old, worn out Converses had lost their grip years ago. He felt the world tilt and would have fallen if a strong, warm hand hadn’t grabbed him by the arm.

Time seemed to stop.

The shout of surprise stayed on the tip of Changbin’s tongue, half in and half out of his mouth.

It was Chan. Of course it was Chan. He was  _ right there _ , like he was always going to be there. His outfit wasn’t too different from yesterday’s. Black from head to toe. But instead of a hoodie, he wore a more season appropriate shirt covered in almost too many zippers and buttons. Around his neck was a thick silver chain. He wasn’t wearing a hat on his chestnut brown hair, which meant Changbin could fully see his face. See his wide, hazel-brown eyes full of worry. See his half-open mouth. His Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat.

Chan pulled on Changbin’s arm a little, setting the shorter boy upright on both of his feet.

They were chest to chest now. If Changbin were taller, they’d be face to face. The two of them breathed in sync. In and out. Exploding and reconstituting. Exploding and reconstituting. They even blinked in unison as something far, far bigger than themselves brought them together.

All Changbin wanted to do was kiss him. Hug him. Be kissed and hugged by him. But he stood still. He made himself  _ stand still _ . Because they were just strangers, after all. It would be a little silly if they kissed.

Chan squeezed his arm. “Are you okay, Changbin?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> @[Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/TheSwingbyJHF)


	4. Astronaut.

Chan recognized him! It was all Changbin wanted. All he needed. Without meaning to, he smiled. He had expected the man to just brush past him or practically ignore him much like he had in the library, but the look on Chan’s face now… This look full of recognition and want and longing and… hope. His mouth open in a silent gasp as lifetimes of emotion flooded him for the first time. 

Chan  _ knew _ him. Changbin’s name had slipped off Chan’s tongue so easily.  _ Are you okay, Changbin? _ Changbin felt his heart as it skipped a beat. Everything hit him all over again. That this man knew his name even though they’d never introduced themselves to each other. Chan felt this beautiful, poignant thing between them too. This red thread tying their pinkies to each other… Chan felt it too. Changbin was not going through this oddity alone. He wasn’t a lunatic confusing his dreams with reality. He wasn’t the only one who knew things he shouldn’t. Feelings things he shouldn’t. Chan knew him, too! They were in this together. They  _ were _ together.

Changbin and Chan stared at each other like they were the only two people in the world. Chan pulled on Changbin’s arm a tad, bringing them one step closer. They were sharing so much space now. Sharing breaths. And none of it felt strange. 

It was quite a relief that everything about Chan was as Changbin remembered. His smell was the same. The size of his hand was the same. The concerned tilt of his eyebrows. His cute dimples! Changbin knew this face in a way that he shouldn’t after only catching a glimpse of it beneath a hat in the library.

The sense of deja vu was mighty. Changbin had this ache in his heart, this void in his chest, as he realized that although this was the first time, it was not the first time. They’d stood like this before, two people who didn’t know each other yet they knew each other.

All of this… Every single bit of it had already happened. And it would happen again. And again.

Changbin was awake but he was dreaming. Seeing glimpses of their past. They’d stood like this on a college campus before. But they’d also met like this ankle deep in a rice paddy, summer sun on their bare bakes and tree-covered hills in every direction. They’d also met on a blood-soaked battlefield, swords in their hands, back to back as the enemy encircled them. They’d also met in the halls of a palace, one of them dressed in rags and the other in beautiful, priceless silk. On and on the memories went until they were so vague that Changbin couldn’t see them. Until he could only feel them. Until the only thing he was left with was the experience of knowing Chan.

A tear rolled down Changbin’s cheek but he made no move to wipe it away. 

Because it wasn’t a tear of happiness like he’d assumed. There was sadness in it. Desperation. Brokenness. Tragedy. 

They’d loved each other for decades. Centuries. Eons. But there had always been obstacles.

But despite the pain that came along with it, Changbin still wanted that love. He wanted to hold on with everything he had. He didn’t want to let go. Changbin wanted to lean in. He wanted to close the distance between them and tell Chan all of the things that had gone on with him since the last time they’d met. Not yesterday at the library but the  _ last time they’d met _ . The last time they’d known and loved each other. Changbin’s body, from his brain to his veins to his bones to his skin, told him that he’d been running towards Chan his entire life. Every decision he made, every choice he picked, every urge he felt… Choosing this school. Choosing this major. Even being born. It was all put in place to lead him down the path that would make him stand in front of Chan in this very moment and answer Chan’s question. To say with every fiber of his being, “I’m okay.” Because he was okay. He was more than okay. He was complete. With Chan in front of him, he had everything he needed. “I’m okay now.”

“Good.” Chan’s voice was a low and lovely whisper. He pulled his hand away from Changbin’s arm and lifted it to the shorter man’s face, a movement of his thumb swiping away the tear that hung on Changbin’s upper lip.

Then reality sank in. The moment passed. The rosy tint to the world was washed away, replaced by gray, washed-out color. They were no longer reunited lovers but two strangers who’d bumped into each other at the door. 

Chan realized what he’d said. Realized that he’d called Changbin by his name. He realized he was stroking his thumb over Changbin’s cheek and that Changbin was leaning into his hand. The adoration on his face morphed first to confusion and then to embarrassment. He drew his hand back and his whole face burned red as he blushed. “Wait, do I… know you?”

Yes. Changbin wanted to say it. His skin tingled in the place where Chan’s fingers had been a moment earlier. Yes, they knew each other. Yes yes yes! They knew each other better than they knew themselves. They knew each other so well that Changbin could  _ see _ how badly Chan wanted to step closer. He could  _ feel  _ how badly Chan wanted to be close to him again. Grab hold of him again. But… “No,” Changbin mumbled. He lowered his gaze to the cement sidewalk. To his ratty, beat up shoes. He found himself comparing his cheap footwear to Chan’s new chunky Hot Topic boots. 

Then Chan asked the impossible. “Should I know you?” 

_ Because I feel like I do _ , were the unspoken words. Changbin didn’t know how he knew. He heard them as if Chan had spoken them. Felt them vibrate across his ear drums. Felt them settle between his ribs. He didn’t know how he knew that was what Chan wanted to say, but he knew. He just did. And it hurt him, caused him actual physical pain, that they both wanted the exact same thing but were holding themselves back from it. Out of… what? Shame? Changbin looked up and met Chan’s eye. “I don’t see how you would,” he stated. Because they didn’t know each other. They shouldn’t. Unless Hyunjin was actually right about them having known each other in a past life. Unless something like that could actually exist in a world like this.

Chan nodded solemnly. “I see.” There was a shimmer to his eyes as if tears were threatening to spill out from them. “You look so familiar, though,” he added. “And it’s making me so sad.” There was a soft roundness to his tone as if he hadn’t meant to admit that last bit aloud. He ran a hand over his face and across his eyes as if to wipe away whatever dreamy stupor he’d fallen into. “Sorry,” he said. He put in a visible amount of effort to step around Changbin without touching him. Without lingering. “Sorry for bumping into you but… you said you’re okay so I have to go.” His voice broke on the last word. “I have class.”

Changbin wanted to grab Chan’s wrist and stop him from leaving but he did not. “Right. I understand. I also have class.”

“Okay, then,” said Chan. And then he was walking away. Again. Each step he made took him farther and farther from Changbin’s reach. But this time, at least, he looked behind him and watched Changbin watch him.


	5. Time machine.

“Girl,” Yang Jeongin, the freshman, squealed, “this is some fucking cunt shit!”

Fortunately, Changbin knew the guy well enough to know that was a compliment. “Thanks, I guess.”

Jeongin squealed again as he discovered another new thing in Changbin’s work. “I’m in awe. Bitch, look at this. The details. The craftsmanship. The material.” He circled around Changbin’s dress form like a predatory bird about to dive. “This is fucking amazing. This is in different areas!”

Changbin said, “I guess so.” Jeongin was usually always this enthusiastic and, if Changbin was being honest, he couldn’t always tell if the kid was being genuine or a passive-aggressive asshole.

“This is nothing like the sketches you showed the class,” Jeongin went on. “But it’s still cunt. The sleeves on this. Is that a goddamn waist sash?”

Changbin had completely reworked his design from yesterday. Not because of Seungmin and his barbed, poisonous words but because Changbin now had a different purpose. A muse. So he had to make the necessary changes. Gone were the embroidered sleeves and the heavily patterned, embossed fabric. All of that was thrown out of the window in favor of an updated design. Changbin had brought the massive flower embroidery he’d done in a trance at the dorm the other evening and had spent their lab time carefully measuring it and cutting it to fit the patterns he’d made. The design was too large for the sleeves but it was perfectly suited for the back of the garment. Changbin began, “My mom-”

Jeongin cut him off, knowing exactly what his classmate was about to say. “Don’t say your mom’s better. You’re not your fucking mom. You’re an artist in your own right. Your mom can’t do _ this _.” The freshman ran his long, slightly crooked fingers over the ridges and curves of the colorful flowers and leaves and stems of Changbin’s embroidery. His hands were long and pale and skinny, all of his veins visible under the milky color of his skin. Gaudy silver rings wrapped his fingers. His birthstone on one. A cross on another. A tiny little skull on a third. The skin across his knuckles was a bright, rosy pink which contrasted sharply with the blue of his meandering veins. Jeongin had removed his polish since yesterday but Changbin still noticed tiny streaks of bluish-black color on the nails of Jeongin’s thumbs. The freshman said, “You wouldn’t have cranked something like this out in a single night if you weren’t as good as your mom. If you weren’t better.”

Changbin started again, “I-”

“And don’t you dare say you _ guess _.” Jeongin pointed at him. “You’re cunt, goddammit. Start believing it.” 

It was supposed to mean a lot coming from him. The kid was apparently a prodigy of some sort. Or at least that’s what Changbin had read somewhere. Jeongin should have still been in high school but was already about to be a year through college. He’d gotten into the school on a merit scholarship after having gone viral on Twitter with a sped-up video of him putting together one of his more avant-garde creations. Fashion brands had reached out to him with internship offers but Jeongin had wisely chosen the full ride at their design school. 

At long last, Changbin accepted the barrage of compliments. “Thanks.”

“Bitch,” Jeongin screeched. “Are you doing all of your stitching with gold metallic thread?”

“Can you keep it down,” Seungmin bellowed from his place two tables over. “You sound like a screaming hamster.”

Jeongin raised a middle finger and stuck out his tongue at his upperclassman.

Seungmin merely pinched his nostrils closed as if an awful smell had just accosted him. “Stop moving around. You keeping wafting the stench of your H&M in my direction.”

“Fuck,” Changbin gasped under his breath. 

Jeongin frowned. The argument was right there on the tip of his tongue but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything except angrily wag his finger and turn red in the face.

Not wanting to be Seungmin’s next target, Changbin said, “Ignore him, Seungmin,” and then jostled Jeongin aside. He resumed his work sewing the newly reworked sleeves of his project onto the rest of the garment. Since he was no longer doing embroidery on them, he’d opted for a lightly patterned fabric instead that would pick up a few of the colors of the flowers he’d made.

“I could literally stand here and watch you work all day,” commented Jeongin. “You’re like… one of the few people in class who does all of the stitching by hand.”

“My mom taught me,” Changbin said. Just like her mom had taught his mom. All so that the tailor shop would stay in the family for yet another generation. Changbin was set to inherit it. Just like his descendant was set to inherit it. So on and so on. Down the line. Their paths already decided by those who came long before.

“I could rock the shit out of this,” Jeongin declared. "Dress it up with a slick button down and some slacks? Bitch! Or go really cunt with some knee-high boots.”

“It’s not for you,” said Changbin. No one except Chan was going to wear it.

“Well, can you make me something similar, girl? I’ll commission you. Fuck. Look at it. The flow. The _ movement _.”

It was day two of the project and most of the other students were at least attempting to be serious about their designs now. No more wasting time cutting class to grab food or head out to the quad for the outdoor air. No more busying themselves with preliminary sketches or colored pencils or fabric swatches. Nearly everyone was working on their patterns today. Measuring out fabric. Stitching on beadwork. Leaning over sewing machines. The constant whir of their activity was like white noise. 

The only two students even working with their actual garments today were Seungmin and Changbin. Overachievers both of them. It was just that one was far better at managing his time and expectations than the other. Seungmin had finished the underlying construction of his dress’s bodice and sleeves so he was now going in on it with a needle and thread, carefully sewing glass crystals across the bust in hypnotizing concentric circles. The crystals weren’t Swarovski but Seungmin could take anything and make it look like it was only available for VVIP. This dress was going to be no exception. Changbin had stolen glances at Seungmin’s sketches when the guy had left the lab for a bathroom break and he’d been stunned by what he’d seen. The dress looked like half of nothing right now but the final product was going to end up a lush pink and sparkling gown so long that it pooled on the floor. Worthy of any red carpet.

Changbin had gotten much farther along in terms of progress, but the simple silhouette of the menswear item he’d created looked plain and borderline half-assed in comparison to Seungmin’s luxury catalog looks.

“Stop looking at him,” Jeongin’s voice floated into Changbin’s head like his own conscious. “I can feel you second guessing yourself from here, girl.”

Changbin looked over at the freshman. “Don’t you have work of your own to do?” Not that the kid annoyed him… He could just be… annoying.

The freshman chuckled. “I’m taking a break. Trying to absorb some inspiration through osmosis.” He rubbed his hands together as if for warmth. The AC _ was _ cranked up pretty high today. “I did a ton of work late last night and I think I burned myself out. Can’t get the gears turning. I’m still trying to convince myself not to scrap the whole thing and start the fuck over.”

Changbin dampened the tip of his needle with his tongue before continuing to hand stitch his garment’s sleeves. He’d been a bit more scatterbrained than usual today, pricking himself repeatedly. His stubby fingers were wrapped in narrow bandages and his nails were an uneven, chewed up catastrophe. When he realized Jeongin was still standing nearby, watching him, Changbin asked, “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know. Just talk to me,” Jeongin huffed. “Help me through it.” His fingers fidgeted with the buttons of his storm gray dress shirt. It didn’t look_ terrible _. It was just wrinkled. With a few visible snags on the shoulders.

Changbin didn’t know where to start. “Well, I’m going to give this thing _ pockets _. They’re going to sit like this. You know. Angled this way with the pattern going like this for contrast. Using this technique my grandma taught my mom, I’ll-”

Jeongin cut in quickly. “Talk to me about something other than sewing.”

“Oh.” Changbin felt the air whoosh out of him. 

The momentum of the conversation died and they stood there in silence for a lengthy amount of time. 

Changbin wasn’t too sure what he should talk about. He didn’t even know if there was anything worth saying. He and Jeongin usually only spoke about global fashion weeks, designer runway shows, magazine covers and their deep-seated hatred for peasant tops. What were they supposed to talk about if not sewing?

Changbin looked up at his garment again. At the spring-colored fabrics he’d gone back to the store to buy. A soft green. Robin’s egg blue. A bluish-violet just like ripe plums for contrast. The garment didn’t quite fit on the dress form properly but that was to be expected. He’d sewed it with Chan’s measurements in mind and he was significantly bulkier than any dress form.

A memory jumped to the forefront of his mind then. A memory that wasn’t his but someone else’s. A someone who he used to be but wasn’t any longer. Changbin caught a glimpse of the sturdy hands of a Joseon-era tailor making adjustments to the length of the sleeve of a _ hanbok _. His work was interrupted by a broad hand clamping down tight over his. A hand that Changbin knew was Chan’s. And then the memory was replaced by a different but startlingly similar memory. He was a more modern tailor, standing in an aisle lined with suit jackets made of sturdy material in creams and navys and grays and blacks. He ran a tape measure from his patron’s shoulder to his wrist. When he looked up at the man, it was Chan but not Chan. He knew the man was Chan because he felt like Chan. Smiled like Chan. Smelled like Chan.

“I’ve made something custom for him before,” Changbin realized.

Jeongin chewed on his dry bottom lip. “You did what now?”

Changbin squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again. The visions were gone but the sensory information remained. “I sewed a garment for Chan before this.”

“Who is Chan?”

“I keep meeting him,” Changbin mumbled, more to himself than to the underclassman. “Again and again. He’s always there. I couldn’t stay away from him if I tried.”

Jeongin stepped closer and lowered his voice so as not to be overheard by their peers. “Girl, you have a crush on someone?”

“I think it goes a bit beyond a crush.”

“Bitch, let me find out.”

Changbin couldn’t concentrate on his work anymore. Not because of Jeongin’s pestering (although that was a huge part of it) but because the memory had his hands shaking so terribly that he couldn’t sew straight if his life depended on it. He rounded off the step he was working on, bit the thread off with his teeth and placed his tools on the table at the back of the room where he usually spread out his supplies. “I think I’m supposed to be in love with him.”

Jeongin scrunched up his face. “You’ve had a boyfriend all this time and didn’t tell me? I thought we were best fucking friends, bitch.”

“No. It’s not like that.” Changbin waved away Jeongin’s overly staged anger. “I just met him yesterday. Don’t look at me like that. I met him and ever since then I can’t get him out of my head.”

This made Jeongin relax. His friendship had not been betrayed. “You’re just crushing hard. He must be cunt as shit. You never talk to me about guys.”

Changbin felt foolish saying all of this aloud but, “We’re strangers... but I know him. I called out his name when we first met even though I shouldn’t know it! I keep daydreaming about the time we’ve spent together which is fucking insane because we’ve never hung out before. I thought I was losing it but he knew my name too. He was drawn to me just like I was drawn to him.” 

“That’s some damn insane chemistry.”

“It’s how it’s supposed to be. Chan and I… We’re supposed to be together.”

“Supposed?”

“I talked to Hyunjin… You know Hyunjin, right? I talked to him about this and he said maybe Chan and I knew each other in a past life.”

“You believe that?” Jeongin raised an eyebrow in contempt.

“Yes,” Changbin said quickly. Emphatically. “I have to believe it because nothing else makes sense. I remember entire conversations that we’ve had even though we’ve never really talked to each other like that. I remember his hands. God, I remember his hands… I remember kissing him and laughing because of him and crying because of him. I feel like I know what he’s about to say. I feel like I always know where he is. I really think the universe is telling me that I’m supposed to be with him.”

The serious, impassioned look on Changbin’s face finally made Jeongin realize that the older man was taking this soulmate stuff _ seriously _. The mocking sneer of a grin on Jeongin’s face melted away, leaving something a bit more sympathetic behind. “Soulmates, huh? Isn’t that sad?”

Changbin squeezed his fingers. Anything to get them to stop trembling. “I think it’s a happy little thing. Running into him today was the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“That’s what I mean, though.” Jeongin grabbed Changbin by the arm and pulled him away from the dress form and towards the far corner of the work lab. He’d noticed that Seungmin had paused in his work to stare at them and it was his duty as Changbin’s friend to get him out of the line of fire. 

On the other side of the room, they had a bit more privacy with the shelves of scrap fabric and buckets of old safety pins hiding them away. The blinds were open, allowing in slashes of early afternoon sunlight and giving them a view of the tall flight of stone stairs and the modern art sculpture that sat between their building and the next one over.

Jeongin said, “Isn’t it sad that who you love has been predetermined?” 

“I think it’s great. It actually…” Changbin sighed wearily, as if he’d just let go of a heavy weight. “It’s actually quite a relief.”

Jeongin was not convinced. “Let’s assume that all of this freaky shit is really happening… Isn’t it like being led towards a cage? You don’t love him because you want to. You love him because you’re being forced to.”

Changbin shook his head. Half in disagreement. Half to shake his brand new doubts away. “That’s not it at all. No. I’m not being forced.” He raised a hand to his chest. He could feel his heart beating. Feel it pushing back against his hand as if it was always being tugged in Chan’s direction. “If you could feel what I feel… If you could see what I see… Nothing about this is forced. All of this is like it’s supposed to happen.” 

“Supposed,” Jeongin repeated the word a second time.

“He and I…” Changbin took a deep, steadying breath. “We were born to meet. We came to this school to meet. We’ve been moving towards each other since our first breaths.”

“That’s… cheesy. But cute.” Jeongin still wore a mask of cynicism. “That couldn’t be me, girl. I couldn’t. If I can’t choose-”

“It’s not about choosing.” Changbin felt shaky. He was about to cry but not because of Jeongin’s pessimism. It was because he could feel the distance between himself and Chan. They weren’t close to each other. Right on top of each other. The ache wouldn’t go away until they were. “It’s about knowing. Jeongin… I _ know _ him. I love him. I’ve loved him for lifetimes. But he keeps...” A sob tore out of his throat. So unexpected that he could not stop it. So loud that a few of their classmates and even their professor looked up in their direction. Changbin ignored the stares. He clenched his jaw and held back his tears. “But he keeps walking away from me.”

Not just in this life but in the others too. 

“We are always happy together. We are always strong enough to face any obstacles. We’ve fought next to each other. We’ve fought _ for _ each other. Nothing could stop us. Yet it is always Chan who gets scared first. It is always Chan who leaves.” Changbin sniffled hard. For once, this strange knowledge of their past lives together terrified him. “How do I know that, Jeongin?” He clamped his hands down hard on Jeongin’s bony little shoulders and shook him fiercely. “This is what I mean. This is what I’m talking about. How do I _ know _ that?”

He was getting loud and screechy and attracting everyone’s attention again.

  
Jeongin pried Changbin’s vice grip hands off of his shoulders and when he held them, he could feel how terribly they shook. Jeongin squeezed them hard in a mad attempt to be reassuring. To be Changbin’s solid anchor in the center of a violent storm. “Let’s dip out of class a little early,” he suggested. Watching Changbin cry was going to make _ him _ cry. “Pack your things. Let’s go get ice cream.”


	6. The words I say, they mean things.

They opted to sit outside.

Jeongin figured it would be for the best if the two of them sat by themselves on the grass beneath a shade tree rather than in the overcrowded, noisy cafeteria. 

“Sorry,” Changbin grumbled. He was still oversensitive. Still shaky. Still sniffling. It took him quite some time to get his spoon of ice cream in his mouth. “I’m not usually like this.”

“It’s okay to feel things, girl,” Jeongin told him. He’d gone for a waffle cone instead of a plastic cup. Strawberry and vanilla with rainbow sprinkles instead of double chocolate with chocolate sauce like Changbin. “It’s okay to let it out sometimes.”

The warmth of the late May sun on their skin was a welcome change to the frigid touch of the AC indoors. Changbin almost wanted to take his jacket off. He said, “But that’s the thing… I feel like I’m letting out someone else’s emotions. I shouldn’t care so much… but I do. I shouldn’t  _ cry _ so much, but...”

They sat in silence for a moment. Changbin only just then felt sturdy enough to lift his spoon to his mouth without dropping it or missing his mouth. The ice cream was tasty. A much needed sugar boost to drag him out of his slump. Classes were in session so the quad was relatively empty. Much emptier than it had been that morning. There were still students milling about, making noise, but Changbin and Jeongin had their own little corner of the green, away from the sidewalks and benches. There was a stark difference between the striped expertly manicured lawn of the quad and the unruly, tall grass of the rest of the campus grounds. Wildflowers in blues and oranges and yellows sprouted from the ground in thick clumps and attracted flying bugs and chirping birds.

Changbin picked up the thread of their conversation. “I feel so smothered. The more time I spend without him… God, it’s like I can’t  _ breathe _ .”

“It’s you remembering your past lives,” Jeongin figured. It had taken him a bit to get on board, but he was a tentative believer in all of this now. “You just miss him, girl. That’s all.” He leaned against the trunk of the old tree but only with his shoulder, wary about getting dirt and grass stains on his outfit.

“I want this… I want  _ him _ but I’m scared.” Changbin, with his old jeans and older shoes, thought that a little bit of grime added character to his clothes, so he sat on the ground between two tree roots that reached up from out of the dirt like wizened, gnarled fingers. He said, “Don’t get me wrong. He… Chan never mistreated me. I know that much. I can tell that I don’t remember everything just yet but I  _ do _ know that he’s kind. His love is safe and selfless and uplifting and constant. He just has a tendency to run when things get hard. And things have always been hard for us. I don’t think I blame him.” Changbin paused to shovel more chocolate ice cream in his mouth. At least now, he could breathe in and out without wanting to cry his eyes out. “Times were different. And he was a prince at one point. I think. I’m guessing. We couldn’t always  _ be _ together.”

“But what about now? Like you said, times have changed. Neither of you are royalty as far as I know.” Jeongin gave his ice cream a lick, not knowing or not caring that it was melting and dripping down his fingers in sticky, pink rivulets. “There’s nothing left to keep you apart.”

“You’re right. There shouldn’t be.”

Jeongin felt it coming. He prompted, “But…?”

Changbin gulped down another swallow of ice cream. He could feel the chill of it move to the bottom of his throat. “It’s just that…” There was nothing keeping them apart except themselves. Changbin could feel how the both of them were avoiding falling into each other’s orbit. Doing everything they could to not end up caught in the other’s gravitational pull. Ever since that morning, Changbin would feel Chan draw close and then, as if feeling their inevitable meeting, would turn away again. Hell, on his and Jeongin’s way to the cafeteria to get their treats, Changbin sensed Chan on the other side of the main hall’s double doors. Chan wasn’t the only perpetrator, though. He had ran away but Changbin had also purposefully hesitated at the doors long enough to give Chan time to flee. “It’s just that our star burns brightly in the beginning but it quickly burns out. Always.” Neither of them wanted to get hurt again but they were only hurting themselves by keeping their distance.

“Running from hurt rarely saves us from hurt, girl,” Jeongin sounded uncharacteristically mature. “I’m not saying run headfirst into danger… but, bitch, we should all be smart enough to know when the hurt is coming. We just have to brace ourselves.” He punctuated his wisdom with a noisy slurp of his ice cream.

“So you’re saying I should run towards him instead of away from him?” Changbin laughed as he realized that the answer was obvious. “I bet we’re both worrying for no reason. If we talk then everything will be just wonderful.”

Jeongin swiped his tongue up his index finger, licking up his melting ice cream. “How did you feel? Before you met him, I mean. How did you feel?”

“Normal,” Changbin explained. “Or so I thought.” The pull had always been there. The feeling of being incomplete had always left him feeling hollow. “It’s never like I was sick or anything… It’s just that I didn’t know what I was missing.”

“But now you do.” Jeongin finished for him.

Changbin sighed. “And it hurts like shit.”


	7. Standing in the way of control.

When Changbin caught glimpses into his past lives, it was like staring into a mirror but not seeing his own face reflected back in the glass. It wasn’t as eerie or as frightening as such an out of body experience should have been. He knew he was looking at himself. Or rather, he knew he was looking at the person he used to be. Much like how he knew Chan’s name, Changbin knew the names of the men he’d been in the past. He knew their faces like they were his own. He knew them much like he knew Hyunjin. Like he knew Jeongin. They were simply someone else. Someone completely different from him with their own history and desires and fears and futures. Their own stories to tell. He knew he wasn’t them and that they weren’t him but that did not mean they weren’t connected. When they moved, he moved. When they spoke, he spoke. When they had a thought, he could read it. But the faces and bodies were always different. The houses they lived in were different. The friends and families they had. The lives they lived. Sometimes even the country. They were all different. But one thread connected them all: they were all tailors. All of them sewed clothes for a living. Whether it was in the opulent halls of a Joseon palace, in a fancy department store with a megarich clientele, in some back alley dry cleaners, in a junky garage with sewing supplies stashed away in old cookie tins or, currently, in the Seo family tailor shop. They all made clothes. And Chan was always next to him. Or whoever it was Chan was in that life. A student, a businessman, a sports prodigy, a poor farmer’s son, a soldier with no family at home to protect, a prince… And even farther back. To the mountains and caves and winding trade routes. Chan was _ always there _. His large and hairy hands always grabbing hold of Changbin’s. Intertwining their fingers together. Whispering in his ear. Pressing kisses to his neck.

Each lifetime added to their love. Deepened it. So now Changbin sat on the couch in his dorm room with the weight of all of that love on his shoulders. Drowning in it. Buried beneath it.

“Good lord.”

The voice cut into Changbin’s melancholia. He blinked and looked across the room at his roommate.

“You should just try to find him,” Hyunjin suggested. His words were kind but his tone was far from encouraging. “I mean, _ please _ go try to find him. Right now.” Even Hyunjin could get impatient. “Because neither of us are going to get any damn homework done tonight with you moping and sighing like that.”

“I’m not moping,” he defended himself, but he so clearly was. Changbin sat up straight. He rubbed his palm across his tired, sore eyes and looked down at the stack of worksheets and loose leaf paper he needed for his assignments. Everything was half-completed. Notes he’d started taking. Passages he’d started highlighting. Questions he’d started answering. But nothing was finished. There was no telling how long he’d just been sitting there on the couch wasting time. “And some of this is due first thing in the morning,” he grumbled. He wiped at his face again, thankful that he at least hadn’t been crying this time. The amount of tears he’d shed lately was getting embarrassing. Changbin waved his hand over his phone so that the movement would cause the screen to show him a clock and he nearly jumped off the couch at the time he saw. “Shit. I’m not going to have _ any _ of this done in time. Even if I pull an all-nighter.” If being a fashion student was all about sewing, he’d be set. Sadly, there were definitions to memorize, research papers to write, extensive designer biographies to parse and overcomplicated breakdowns of design movements to sift through. “And I’d started early tonight!”

Hyunjin propped his chin up on his hand and tapped his neatly-trimmed fingertips on his pink, plump lips. Although he spoke to Changbin, he kept his eyes on his laptop screen. “Well, I tried getting your attention before but you were clearly someplace else.”

“I was thinking about him,” Changbin explained. “I always lose track of time when I think about him. I mean, when I think about the lovers we used to be.”

Hyunjin just kept toying with his lips. He was either deep in thought or completely annoyed, it was difficult to tell when his eyes were drooping with exhaustion. He had rather unique hands, to say the least. Very wide and rectangular. The joints in his fingers were a tad swollen, as if inflamed. Perhaps from past injuries or maybe from the hours he spent typing and typing and clicking and scrolling. His nails were uneven. Untrimmed. Hangnails stuck out from his nail beds at jagged angles, the skin around them slightly pink with irritation. Despite the flaws, there was still a beauty to them. All of it accentuated by his narrow, pretty wrists.

“What if I don’t like him,” Changbin blurted out.

His outburst made Hyunjin turn his attention away from his laptop and focus on Changbin. It took him a moment to decode a smidgen of context from the words. “But didn’t you say you were soulmates? Didn’t you say you love him?”

“My past selves loved him… but what if _ I _ don’t?” And Changbin was absolutely positive that it was Jeongin’s realist viewpoint that had him doubting things like this. He never would have found fault in any of this if Jeongin hadn’t gone on and on about _ choices _. Changbin was so sure of what he felt, but what if the things he felt were misleading? Wool pulled low over his eyes? 

“Changbin…” Hyunjin exhaled his name like it was a curse. He pushed one of his fingers a little farther into his mouth and bit the tip of it. Under his breath, he muttered, “Lord knows…”

Changbin propped his bare feet up on the edge of the couch and pressed his knees close to his chest. “What if… What if the reason why he keeps running away from me is because he doesn’t like me?”

“He’s running away from you?”

“I feel him get close and then move away… get close and then move away… It’s like he’s hesitating. What if when he met me, he didn’t like what he saw?”

Hyunjin sat up straight and lowered his hand from his mouth. “You don’t know that.” Changbin had all of his attention now. It was late in the evening and neither of them were expecting guests so Hyunjin was in nothing but his boxers and a pair of knee-high socks with Sonic The Hedgehog on them. To be a nerd who legitimately sat in front of his laptop all day, he had a surprisingly lean and sculpted form. Perhaps that’s why he strutted around attempting to show it off at every opportunity.

“Of all the things I do know about him, his impression of me is one thing I can’t tell.”

“None of that should matter,” Hyunjin said. “If you’re supposed to be together, then you’re supposed to be together. Appearances don’t matter. If you feel that strongly about him then of course he feels just as strongly about you. You wouldn’t keep meeting each other and loving each other lifetime after lifetime otherwise.”

He had a point. They were always happy together in Changbin’s memories so why couldn’t they be happy now. In the present? Because, surely, they’d be happy together in the future. Not in this life but the next one. And the one after. And the one after. They were destined. They would keep running towards each other regardless of the distance.

“Well, run towards him then.”

Changbin blinked in surprise and looked over at him.

“Yeah, you said that last bit out loud, yo.” Hyunjin had been halfway through designing the layout for a magazine spread but now he pushed his laptop away from him across the coffee table so that he could stare up at Changbin without the blue light of the screen glare in his eyes. “Go run to him. I meant right now, Changbin. Put on your shoes and go talk to him because if you sigh all deep again…” He let the threat peter out, unfinished.

“It’s almost eleven at night. There’s a curfew.”

“Did you forget who our RA is? Just swing by the 24/7 convenience store on your way back and bribe him with honey barbecue chips if you get caught.”

“Fine,” huffed Changbin. Although, really, he didn’t need to buy any because he always kept a fresh bag of the exact brand and flavor of chips Minho preferred in one of the pockets of his backpack for just such occasions. “I’ll go.”

⌲

Changbin didn’t know where to go, so he went to the quad.

Not exactly _ romantic _ but it got the job done.

He would have liked to go somewhere symbolic, such as the first place he and Chan had met, but the library closed promptly at nine and he doubted he could wait until eight in the morning to meet Chan again.

The quad was the next best spot. It was the second place they’d met. Technically. Close enough. Right?

“What am I doing out here,” he whispered to himself as he walked. His old Converses were so torn up and threadbare that it felt like he was walking barefoot. “This is everything I’ve ever wanted but… I’m so anxious.”

It’s not like he could call or text Chan. He didn’t know the man’s number. All he could do was go somewhere that Chan could meet him and… hope that Chan came out here to meet him. If they could feel each other, if they were fated to always move towards each other, wasn’t this meeting Chan halfway?

Changbin picked a spot on the green and dropped his bag off of his shoulder.

It was dead quiet at this time of night. Night classes were over. The classroom buildings sat quiet and empty and dark. The quad was too far from the dorms to catch the noise, music and foot traffic of the residential areas so Changbin found it easy to believe that he was in this big, empty space alone. The trees were just shadows. The buildings were brown, lifeless boxes. The lamps along the sidewalk cast their blue LED light across the grass but it still wasn’t exactly bright out on the green.

Changbin sat down cross-legged in the middle of the grass, his denim jacket on over his matching pajama set. He hadn’t even considered putting on a cute outfit. He wasn’t even sure it mattered.

The dark and the quiet got to him quickly. He unzipped his bag, grabbed one of his notebooks and tore out a sheet of paper. To keep his hands and his mind busy, he folded paper airplanes. He took his time. Made sure that each flap was perfectly aligned. It was difficult to do. The bandages on his fingers and palm from his mistakes with the sewing needle made it hard to be precise with his folds and creases but, after several minutes, he succeeded.

He looked around.

Stillness in every direction.

There was no Chan.

Changbin ripped free another sheet of paper and folded yet another paper plane. He couldn’t do anything fancy so he just stuck with the basic, classic triangular wing shapes. He took his time and made them as neatly as he could.

He finished that one and started on a third. And then a fourth. And then a fifth.

When he finished one, he laid it down on the grass next to the others.

He thought they represented his lives with Chan quite well. Very similar in shape and purpose but with minor yet noticeable differences in execution. It wasn’t so much the same plane over and over but the same concept repeated. The same idea reinvented but still carrying the foundation of what came immediately before it.

Changbin made six airplanes. Seven. Eight.

He was just starting to think that he should clean up his mess and go back to his dorm when he felt his heart _ lurch _. It was like his soul was reaching out, grasping to find the missing piece.

_ Changbin? _

He felt someone call him somewhere deep inside him. Heart to heart.

“Changbin?”

He was turning his head before his name had even hit the air. "Chan?"

Chan was there. Sweaty, like he’d been running. Panting. Hands on his knees to help him catch his breath. He was close but not close enough. He’d never be close enough until they were touching. But they were strangers. Regardless of the pasts they shared and the futures they _would_ share, in that moment, they were strangers.

But still…

“Chan?” Changbin gasped out. He had convinced himself that Chan wouldn’t show. That he’d keep ignoring the pull drawing them together. But here he was. “It’s you.”

Chan managed to catch his breath. He straightened his spine and when he looked up at Changbin, his eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from a long night of shed tears.

Changbin held out his hand. Reaching. Wanting. Longing. Yearning.

Chan reached out his own hand and grabbed hold of Changbin’s.

It was just like Changbin knew it would be. It was just like he’d dreamed. Just like he’d remembered. The size and shape and warmth and comfort. The feeling of being safe and protected and loved. Everything was the exact same. In this life or the last one or the next one. Everything was the same.

Chan effortlessly pulled Changbin to his feet and for the second time that day, they stood chest to chest. Nearly face to face. 

Changbin didn’t care about how strange it was. How weird it was. He pressed his face into the crook of Chan’s neck and just stood there. There was no longer distance between them. There was no longer that god-awful _ ache _. His whole life had been leading up to this one moment and it was everything he needed and more. The chill of the night disappeared as he was swamped in the heavy heat of Chan’s body. The moment lasted for lifetimes. Or perhaps only seconds.

Too soon, Chan stepped back enough to look Changbin in the eye. After taking a deep, shaky breath, the man said three powerful words: “Can we talk?”


	8. I can feel you all around me.

They did not talk.

Or, more accurately, they did not speak to each other using words. They did not have to.

Their language strictly involved touch. Feeling. _ Sensing _.

Connecting.

A thousand words were exchanged between them with just a brief moment of eye contact. With just an accidental brush of fingers over a wrist. With every inhale and exhale. With every synchronous heartbeat.

Just existing right in front of each other was worth more than any conversation.

There was no way to ignore the feeling in his chest, no way to avoid it because it was so gigantic, so Changbin said, “I feel very deeply for you.” And it felt so natural to look this stranger in the face and say that. “We’ve barely met but I know so much about you.” A week ago, even pretending to be so passionate about a confession would have turned him into an unsure, giggling mess. But now that it was happening, Changbin knew that he would never be so serious about anything else in his life. “I love you.” He was _ supposed _ to. They were fated. But he couldn’t stop thinking that, even if it weren’t for this soulmate thing, he would still choose Chan.

“Changbin…” Chan breathed out. The name was lovingly percussive on his tongue. “Aren’t you afraid of this?”

“No.” Immediately. Without hesitation. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“But isn’t this impossible?”

“No,” Changbin replied. He didn’t know where his own conviction was coming from. “We wouldn’t be right here right now if it were impossible.” Two magnets drawn to each other. 

Chan let out a shaky breath. He squeezed Changbin’s hand with both of his own, kneading his fingers into Changbin’s hardened and marred, needle-pricked palm. There were numerous words he wanted to say but he could not bring himself to push them past the back of his teeth.

Changbin said, “I thought I was going crazy. I was losing parts of my days. Zoning out. I was remembering things that I knew didn’t happen to me. Making things that I didn’t think I knew how to make. I was crying or smiling from emotions that weren’t mine. I used to be afraid but now I’m not. Because I’m not alone. You’re here. We’re _ both _ here.”

A single tear dropped from the corner of Chan’s eye and Changbin immediately leaned close to press his mouth to Chan’s cheek and kiss the dampness away. He pulled away. Smiling.

This moment was a lifetime in the making. _ Lifetimes _ in the making. Whether they were students or conglomerate heirs or farmers or soldiers or royalty or nomadic sheep herders or sojourning merchants, their karmas were intrinsically connected. Two souls so deeply in love that time and circumstances or even death and rebirth couldn’t stop them from finding each other. Again and again.

Again and again.

“It’s like every single part of you has been branded onto my heart and my mind,” Chan mumbled after a long, long time. “It’s as if you are a part of me.”

Changbin closed the gap between them and pressed his mouth to Chan’s cheek again. Not to kiss away a tear but just to kiss him. To express his adoration. Changbin could feel Chan’s pulse. Feel every twitch of the muscles beneath his skin. Feel the heat of life that blazed inside his body. Changbin pressed his mouth to Chan’s jaw, to his neck, to his round nose. He raised a hand to Chan’s chin to tilt the man’s head so that he could stand up on his tiptoes and kiss the space between Chan’s eyebrows. 

Chan found the courage to keep speaking. “I know the name of your favorite band. I know how many times you’ve seen them live and how much money you’ve spent on their concert tickets and merch. I know that your favorite color is orange. But not just any orange. It has to be the same warm and rosy color as the sky when the sun rises over the ocean. The view from your hometown.” He let go of Changbin’s hand only to wrap one arm around the shorter man’s waist to pull him close and raise the other so he could trace invisible patterns with his fingers along the back of Changbin’s neck, up and across his skull and into his hair. “I know that you get random cravings for foreign food in the middle of the night because you’ve gone a year and a half living with your roommate who is always bringing back takeout from weird restaurants.” Chan laughed nervously into Changbin’s hair, as if his own knowledge baffled him. “I know you’re always worrying about your family’s business. And I know how you gave up on skateboarding so you could concentrate on your grades and do your parents proud by inheriting the business.” Chan was trying so hard not to cry that he was trembling. “We’ve barely spoken a word to each other yet it’s like I’ve known you all of my life.”

Changbin grabbed fistfuls of Chan’s shirt as he held on for dear life. As if letting go would mean getting swept away. “I know you have a scar on your back from a childhood accident and I can count the exact hundred times your mother told you the scar was where your angel wings used to be.” Changbin sucked in a deep breath and let it out. Chan being so close to him felt so _ right _ . They were the perfect color combination. They were a needle and thread. They were a weaver and the quilt. “I know that I’ve loved you for decades. Centuries. Every time I’m born into a new life, I run to you and you are always there with open arms.” _ Just like now _. He didn’t have to say it. He knew that Chan knew.

The wind picked up. Moist and cool even though it was a warm night. Chan shuddered in the sudden chill and Changbin wrapped him up in his arms to warm him.

It smelled like a thunderstorm was approaching. There was no thunder. Barely any clouds in the sky. But the wind only got this sharp when it was bringing trouble.

Chan wrapped his arms around Changbin as well. Squeezing him hard as if he wanted to crush them together. Fit them into the same mold.

They stood like that. Hugging. Breathing. Being.

But it wasn’t quite enough. Not yet. Changbin stepped back, but not by much. He tilted his head back and raised his hands to either side of Chan’s face. His knobby, tanned, scratched-up fingers caressed Chan’s pale, smooth, unmarked face. Changbin’s thumbs caught Chan’s hot tears before they could fall too far. “I loved you in the past. I’ll love you in this life, Chan. And I’ll love you in the next. I’ll love you at the end of the world. I’ll love you on Mars. Just give me the chance.”

Chan bit his bottom lip. Hard. Turning it dark like the skin of a bruise. He was still holding himself back. Changbin could _ feel _ it. Even with everything they had right in front of them, even with this towering inferno encroaching in around them, Changbin could still tell that Chan wanted to run. Chan always wanted to run. His body tensed.

“Please don’t leave me,” Changbin whispered. Their faces were so close that he could not properly focus. His eyes darted from Chan’s left eye to his right eye, back to his left eye. Back and forth. Watching the tears slowly form and slowly fall.

Chan’s own gaze was stoic. Calm. Hardened like ice. Focused on a point slightly to the right of Changbin’s head.

That’s when things clicked.

It wasn’t until that terrible moment of clarity that Changbin realized that Chan had never come all the way out here to the quad to talk about something sweet and romantic. Their love had been fraught with strife in their previous lives. Why would this time be different? Chan was not out here to wax poetic about soulmates and destiny. He had always been bringing bad news from the start. 

Changbin’s own eyes began to cloud over with tears. Chan hadn’t even _ said anything _ yet but Changbin’s heart was already breaking. Shattering like fragile glass. Yet, desperately, he clung on to the razor-edged shards even as they pierced him. Even as he bled profusely from the wounds. Changbin hoarsely whispered, “Can I kiss you?” And he did not wait for an answer before he closed the gap between their mouths.

It almost seemed as if they would. 

If they kissed, their doubts and fears would vanish and the world and all of its problems would fade… but Chan turned his head at the last possible second, making Changbin’s mouth flatten against his cheek instead. 

“I can’t do this,” Chan said gruffly. He started to pry himself loose of Changbin’s hands, but—

“Why not?” Changbin begged.

Chan didn’t have an immediate answer for him. He seemed surprised that Changbin would even ask.

“Why not,” Changbin repeated. He grabbed Chan tighter, trying so hard not to allow the distance between them to increase. “Why can’t we have this?” He squeezed his eyes shut. Memories of their storied past flooded him. He felt bowled over. Breathless. He wanted to die. “Why can’t we _ ever _ have this?” Why did Chan always leave? Always. Always.

As if he was _ supposed _ to. Just like Changbin was supposed to love him.

“I just can’t do this with you,” said Chan. His voice shattered into a million pieces. His words would have been impossible to understand if Changbin didn’t know him better than he knew himself. “I can’t… You’re making this so difficult for me… I can’t—” He choked up. “I can’t do that to him.”

“To who?”

“You should know.” Chan successfully peeled himself loose of Changbin’s hold and wasted no time stepping back and putting the length of the solar system between them. “Can’t you feel it? You should know.”

Changbin sobbed. His chest hurt as if he’d just been stabbed. As if his every rib was broken. He clamped both of his hands over his nose and mouth to stop the horrible wails fighting to free themselves from his throat. His legs gave out on him and he sank to his knees on the quad. “I know,” he literally choked out. More and more pieces of the complicated puzzle began to fit themselves together in his head. More and more parts of the long string of lives he’d lived made themselves clear to him.

These stories… These lives… Their love… It had never been about just Chan and Changbin.

  
Jeongin had warned him. Earlier that day, Jeongin had _ warned _ him! Told him that he should have been smart enough to see the hurt coming but Changbin hadn’t seen it. The pain had crept up on him. Overwhelmed him. Changbin just hadn’t been smart enough to see that the obstacle that stood between him and Chan, in this life or in any of the lives they’d had in the past… The one thing that stood between them had always been Kim Seungmin.


	9. Unending.

Changbin’s beautiful, magic garden had been clipped.

The roots had been dug up. The leaves had been torn. The petals had been crushed. The stems had been snipped. The earth had been salted and burned.

Changbin stared down at the huge mess. At the wicked destruction. Petals everywhere. Leaves everywhere. Every shattered chunk of his heart everywhere. The seeds of his dream dredged up from the soil by the trowel of reality. 

He took a slow breath in and an even slower breath out. “Jesus.”

Hours of pruning down the drain. Hours of planning and patience wasted. All of the colors ruined. Everything delicate and precious and fragile that he’d given life to now lay flattened and dead in front of him. And Changbin couldn’t even bring himself to be distressed. It almost felt like he deserved it.

There was a noise at the classroom door, the squeak of a shoe or a door hinge, and Changbin turned his head to look.

It was early in the day. Just over half an hour before their morning design class was scheduled to start. Bright beams of gold sunlight poured in through the window, pushing light into every corner. Waking Changbin from the lofty dream he’d spent the last few days in. The light warmed Changbin’s skin despite how cold he felt. “Seungmin,” Changbin breathed out.

“Good morning.” Seungmin walked into the classroom looking wonderfully put together as always. His hair combed and gelled and styled almost excessively vertically. He’d opted for a crisp oxford-style shirt, bowtie and suspenders, thick-rimmed rectangular glasses, and pinstripe slacks that made his already long and slim legs appear to be far longer and slimmer. “How are you today?” The pleasantries felt wrong coming from Seungmin’s mouth and even more wrong entering Changbin’s ears. Every syllable was an abomination. A falsehood. A sucker punch. And both of them knew it. Seungmin looked at the mess of cloth and stitching Changbin stood in front of and didn’t even pretend to look horrified. Without a hint of remorse in his voice, he deadpanned, “Oh no. How terrible. Look at what someone did.” There was no surprise in his tone because he already knew every angle of the disaster.

“Seungmin…” Changbin felt the frustration blaze hot in his chest but he squashed the emotion down. “I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I.” Seungmin sat down in his usual seat and looked over at Changbin with such terrifying delight in his eyes. “I mean… Look at all of that.” He was visibly biting the insides of his cheeks to keep from outright smiling. “I can’t believe anyone would do that. I mean, who could be so evil?”

With a weary sigh, Changbin looked back down at the destruction.

The garment he’d been working on for the last three days now, the garment he’d made good progress on and would even  _ complete _ before the deadline, hung in tatters across the shoulders of the dress form. Someone had angrily taken a pair of scissors to the piece, tearing violent gashes in the sleeves, splitting the stitching, ripping out the lining. All of that ripped fabric billowed in the gust created by the air conditioning unit above their heads. The flowers Changbin had embroidered onto the garment’s back had been ripped up, shredded, torn. Stomped on. Dirtied with the grime beneath a shoe. Nothing was left untouched. If it wasn’t on the floor, it hung in loose-knit clumps from the garment hem like insects cocooned in a spider’s web.

It was unsalvageable. 

Changbin would  _ have _ to start over. He would barely have the time.

“Why would you do this,” Changbin knew he would hate to hear the answer but he asked it regardless.

Seungmin put a scandalized hand on his chest. “You’re accusing me of doing this?” But then, in the next breath, he rolled his eyes and scoffed, dropping the act. “You earned it.” Even his tone of voice had changed. Gotten darker and rougher. Seungmin crossed one leg over the other at the knee and casually pulled his phone out of his pants pocket as if he hadn’t destroyed all of Changbin’s hard work. “I did it because I’m tired of you taking everything from me.”

“What?” Changbin wasn’t sure he knew what the guy meant.

“Don’t act stupid.”

Changbin lifted up a hand and ran his fingers over the destroyed garment. It didn’t even look like it could be clothes. It was just a rotten mess. Changbin dropped his hand from the wreckage and looked over at the dressform that stood behind Seungmin.

The garment was pristine. Elegant. Luxurious. The soft pinks looked almost translucent like resin. The glass beads across the bodice sparkled in the golden light of dawn like diamonds and threw fractals of rainbows across the tiled floor. The dress hung to the floor in a smooth, flowing wave. The design was perfection. A dream brought to life.

Seungmin spoke, “You’re the only other person in this class with any modicum of talent. Only half the people here know what they’re doing. And only half of them even  _ try _ .” He kept his eyes on his phone, scrolling through his chat messages. “You’re good but you’re so shit.” His harsh, venomous words hit harder because he delivered them with the casual boredom of reading off a grocery list. “You have so little ambition, Changbin. You have so much talent but I can tell you don’t want to fucking be here, either. You’re just like the rest of the scum in this class. Your heart’s not in this. It’s like you’re only here because you’re supposed to be.”

Changbin felt a lump form in his throat. Seungmin’s accuracy was unnerving. To the point where Changbin got chills. It was like discovering someone had read his diary or something and was spilling all of those emotional secrets to the exact people that  _ shouldn’t _ hear them.

Changbin had never felt so vulnerable.

Pressing his finger into the fresh wound, Seungmin went on, “You have no focus. Always starting and stopping. Starting and stopping. Never finishing any projects on time. Rushing things to completion at the last minute. Bumbling your way through every fucking presentation. Annoying the professor with all of your basic, no-brain questions. You always do your own thing instead of following the actual parameters of the assignment. So how…” At last, Seungmin tore his eyes away from his phone and stared up at Changbin with such heat in his gaze that Changbin instinctively looked away. “So how,” Seungmin raised his voice, “how do you  _ still _ have better fucking grades than I do?”

Changbin froze. Honestly, he had never put any thought to his grades. He did his homework when it was assigned. He studied for exams when they were announced. He memorized vocabulary, learned important dates in fashion history, watched runway shows like most other people binged Netflix originals. “It’s not like I never turn in a completed project.”

“Shut up,” Seungmin snapped. “Don’t act like you don’t know. I live and breathe this shit. I work my ass off. I stay late working. I come here early to work. I’m always practicing and perfecting. I do everything right. You come in here and dick around yet, somehow, we’re supposed to be on the same level.”

Changbin didn’t even have an argument. The truth was just that apparent. Changbin sewed because his mother sewed. Because his grandmother sewed. Because, in all of his past lives, he sewed. He was set to inherit the Seo family tailor business because his mother had run it. Because his grandmother had run it. Because it had been in the family for generations. The same shop on the same corner on the same street for over a century. Changbin was only good at sewing because he’d done it for so long. Because he’d done it in every life he’d lived.

But he did not  _ want _ to sew. He wanted to skateboard in the dorm parking lot with the other guys and get drunk on the weekends like any other twenty-one year old.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” Changbin kept his voice low even though they were the only two people in the room. Even though they may as well have been the only two people left in the world. “I had no idea you felt that way.”

“Which is why I’m telling you,” Seungmin snapped. “You fuckwad. You’re always taking from me and then acting innocent.”

“I really didn’t know.”

“And now you’re going to act like you aren’t trying to steal my boyfriend,” Seungmin’s accusation was like a punch to the gut.

“I’m not,” Changbin sputtered out. He looked up at Seungmin. The eye contact was a mistake.

Seungmin stood up so quickly that his metal chair tipped over and clattered to the floor with a horrendous sound. “Are you really lying to my face? You aren’t trying to take him from me? Like you weren't here the other day saying you were madly in love with him? After I saw you two on the quad last night?” 

Fuck. “I didn’t know you two were dating,” Changbin attempted to defend himself.

“Like that matters.”

“If you had told me—”

“Why would I? It’s none of your goddamn business.” Seungmin swung out a hand towards the mess of fabric swatches and paper clips and discarded sketches on the table in front of him and came out of it with a pair of scissors in his hand. He stepped menacingly towards Changbin. 

Changbin took a step back but he wasn’t fast enough.

Seungmin grabbed him by the wrist. Tight and unforgiving like a vice. “Maybe I would have let it go if you hadn’t done something to him. If you hadn’t turned him against me. If you hadn’t made him go fucking crazy.”

“I… What?” Changbin choked out. He fought to free himself from Seungmin’s grasp but the strain on his wrist was so great that he feared it would break. “I didn’t… Seungmin, what are you talking about?”

Seungmin furrowed his eyebrows and leaned into Changbin’s face. “He’s been acting batshit since yesterday. Going on and on about some wacko shit, claiming he died and was born again. Telling some lunatic story that he was a king. You’ve turned him into a nutjob, Changbin. All he can talk about is you. How much he fucking misses you. How much he fucking wants you. I can be right in front of him and he won’t even see me. What the hell did you do to him? What drugs did you slip him?”

“It’s nothing like that,” Changbin said. “It’s just that…” He wasn’t even sure he could explain all of this. Reincarnation? Past lives? Knowing everything about each other after having only met once? “It’s just that he and I have this connection and it’s bigger than we know. Bigger than any of us.”

“God, you’ve been smoking the same thing. You’re both out of your minds.”

“Seungmin…” Changbin swallowed hard. Changbin’s mind scrambled to reach back through lifetimes. Across space and time. He remembered Seungmin. It had happened hundreds of years ago, but he remembered him. Seungmin hadn’t always been Seungmin, but he had always  _ been there _ . In the past he shared with Chan. Seungmin had been the commander of the royal guard. An exiled aristocrat. A politician’s offspring. One of the hired workers who tended to the coffee bean trees. On and on their stories went. The three of them. Forever and ever tangled. And if it hadn’t stopped now, it would keep going in the future. He and Seungmin would always clash. Be in disagreement. Fight. They would always smash each other’s hearts to pieces.

Because they were  _ supposed _ to. That was their fate.

Clearly, Seungmin didn’t know any of that. He didn’t remember their pasts and he probably wouldn’t remember their futures. Changbin couldn’t decide if such ignorance was a blessing or a curse. He couldn’t decide which would be worse, to know the pain was coming or to feel it for the first time. Again and again.

“All you know how to do is take from me, you greedy little fuck. A spot in the honor roll. That photo shoot with the magazine the other semester. The professor’s favoritism. Chan. Everything I thought I had, you steal it.” Seungmin peeled Changbin’s fingers back painfully far and then shoved the handle of the scissors onto Changbin’s palm. He squeezed Changbin’s fingers over the handle and then stepped back quickly like he was running from a bomb.

“I’m not trying to take him from you,” Changbin gasped out. He wasn’t sure what Seungmin was up to. The taller man’s panicked, jerky movements were beginning to unnerve him. “I don’t want to take Chan from anyone.” In fact, after last night, after watching Chan walk away from him for what felt like the hundredth thousandth time, Changbin had decided to  _ give up _ on Chan. He’d decided to ignore the pull in his heart that led them to each other. Let the man live his own life. Feel his own feelings. Rebel against this awful, tragic, constantly repeating fate of theirs.

“If you want him so bad, you can have him.” Seungmin snatched his phone off of the table, unlocked it and held it out towards Changbin.

They were standing too far apart for it to do much good but Changbin could easily guess at the contents of the long paragraph that took up the majority of Seungmin’s phone screen.

“Now he wants to break up with me. Now he wants to take a fucking  _ break _ .” Seungmin realized he was shouting and lowered his voice. His anger was barely contained. He visibly shook. “This is so humiliating. You get everything but do absolutely nothing to earn it.”

“Seungmin, I…” Changbin sputtered out.

“I hope the both of you rot in hell.” The torment was so evident on Seungmin’s face that Changbin wanted to cry. Bawl his eyes out. And not even from his own hurt! 

Changbin felt awful. Miserable. “I didn’t mean to come between you.”  _ But I just can’t help it _ , he wanted to say. Even in the middle of such a moment, the first thought that came to his mind was Chan. Chan holding him. Hugging him. Their fingers interlocked. Not just like last night but in similar nights in all of their past lives. 

Changbin had known since he’d met Chan that their love would be fraught with obstacles. He knew that from the tears that always sprang to his eyes when he thought about their love. But he wanted to run towards it in spite of the clear warnings. He wanted to dive headfirst into the shallow waters because his body  _ needed _ to experience it. His soul needed to be drawn to Chan.

“You didn’t mean to fuck shit up but you did.” Seungmin’s voice was sharp like steel. A sword held to Changbin’s throat, pressing against his jugular.

They would have argued further but someone else was coming into the classroom.

Jeongin was halfway down the aisle of work tables and chairs when he spotted Changbin’s ruined project. “Oh my god. What the flying fuck? Bitch,  _ what _ ?” His eyes nearly bugged out of his head. His nostrils flared. “What? Who would do something like that!”

Seungmin let out a noise of disgust. “Can you quiet down? You’re always yelling. And stop making that hideous face. I can go spelunking up your gigantic nostrils.”

Jeongin fumed. He turned towards the upperclassman. “Seungmin, did you do this?” He waved a hand in the direction of the dress form as if he could possibly be talking about anything except for the torn ribbons of fabric all across the floor.

“I did it,” Changbin spoke up. “I did it myself.” He didn’t think he would ever want to defend Seungmin, but... “I got tired of looking at it. I may have gone overboard.”

“Shit, bitch. That’s not… That’s not cunt at all.”

Seungmin put his phone in his pocket and walked up the aisle. He bulldozed Jeongin out of his way and made a beeline to the classroom door. “I wanted to stop him but I didn’t want to get hurt.” He slowed down and halfway turned towards them. “He’s holding a pretty big pair of scissors after all.” That devilish, remorseless grin was back. Clearly, he would have owned up to ruining Changbin’s work. He did not need defending. “But I will say that it was oddly therapeutic to watch him fuck up something so pretty.” He turned back around and exited the classroom.

The silence dragged on. The scissors suddenly felt hot and dangerous in Changbin’s hand. He dropped them and they hit the floor, sliding across the tiles and towards the mess on the floor.

“Girl,” Jeongin cried out. He took a tentative step towards the dress form but then swiveled to walk towards Changbin, only to swivel again back to the dress form. “Why would you do that? You put your heart and soul into this.”

Changbin sighed. He stared at his empty hand. At the reddened impression of the scissor handles left on his skin. At the mess on the floor that he definitely wanted to clean up before the professor showed. 

All he could think about was Chan. 

Still. 

All he could think about was how their story would keep repeating itself no matter what they did. All he could think about were the tears that always filled their relationship up, so close to the edges that the slightest movement made everything spill over and make a mess of everything. “I did it because I’m  _ supposed _ to,” Changbin said. Because it was his destiny to love Chan but not to have him. Because the two of them were meant to be, but not meant to last.

Jeongin approached Changbin. He put a hand on his classmate’s shoulders and his throat tightened when he could feel how badly the shorter man was shaking. “Let’s go to the cafeteria,” he suggested. “It’s not even eight in the morning but I think some ice cream will do us both some good.”

⌲

Later that day, Changbin and Hyunjin went to the library. This time, Changbin made extra sure that Hyunjin was always in sight so that there would be no more embarrassing top shelf shenanigans. An hour of browsing later and Changbin had accrued six books that would hopefully give him the inspiration he needed to shit out a project in two days.

“Help me pick between these two fonts,” Hyunjin begged, shoving his tablet practically against Changbin’s nose.

“Why do you keep asking me stuff like this,” Changbin asked. He went cross-eyed trying to bring the screen into focus, it was so close to his face.

“From one creative to another, I value your input. Now pick a font, yo.”

The library was more crowded than usual. Every table full. Nearly every chair occupied. Every aisle packed with bodies. A low murmur like distant cicadas hung in the air as students whispered to each other. Apparently, one of the hard-ass professors from the film production major had sprang a surprise essay on her students, resulting in an overpopulation of last-minute researchers hogging all of the computers, swarming all of the bookshelves. Changbin was quietly grateful that professors in the fashion design major stuck to the syllables sentence by sentence and due date by due date. It made choosing when to skip class significantly easier.

“I like the one of the left,” Changbin readjusted the stack of books in his arms so that he could point.

Hyunjin made a face. He lowered the tablet so that he could double check the screen. “Did you just pick a  _ serif _ font?” He shook his head like he couldn’t believe it. “I trusted you.”

“Then why would you  _ ask me _ ?”

Hyunjin shrugged his shoulders up to his ears. “To be honest, I always go with the opposite of what you pick out on purpose. It’s like… my thing.”

Changbin rolled his eyes. “Glad I could help.” He led the way to the end of the aisle. He was finally ready to check out his selections. Hyunjin hadn’t rushed him or anything, but if Changbin had to hear his roommate’s stomach growl one more time, his own stomach would start caving in on itself out of sympathy.

“Seriously. You’re a lifesaver, yo. I never know what I want.”

“Then maybe I should make you pick the ugly stuff and see if you can still work with it.”

“Challenge accepted. I don’t think you’ve ever met anyone as stubborn as me when it comes to this shit.”

The two of them reached the end of the aisle. There was a miniature break in communication. Changbin turned left towards the library’s front desk. Hyunjin turned right towards their usual seating area tucked into the corner by the massive octagonal table in the center of the building.

They ran into each other.

Changbin’s books fell from his arms and hit the floor in a painful mountain of creased pages and folded-over softcovers.

Changbin groaned. “Dude!”

“You didn’t tell me where we were going,” Hyunjin griped, not taking his eyes off of his tablet screen.

Changbin squatted down to pick up the mess.

Another pair of hands reached for the same book he was about to grab. Fingers brushed. Electricity jolted across skin.

Changbin knew who it was before he looked up. “Chan.” There were so many layers attached to that name but Changbin was determined to only sift through it all and pick out the good, sweet, lovely things.

“I can’t stay away from you,” Chan mumbled. He didn’t even attempt to keep up the pretense of helping Changbin clean up. He just grabbed Changbin’s hand and squeezed. “I called myself walking away from you but the next thing I know, I’m right in front of you.”

His words sent Changbin’s heart pounding. Sent his cheeks flushing. He should walk away from this. Nothing good could come of this. He knew it. He could feel it. But his heart wanted what his heart wanted. He sucked in a breath to gather all of his courage. “Can we talk?”

  
He expected Chan to run from this. He expected to see nothing but the man’s broad back as he retreated, as he fled like he always did whether in this life, or in the one before that, or the one before  _ that _ . But… “Sure,” Chan breathed out. “Let’s talk.” He was still gripping Changbin’s hand, his large one practically swallowing Changbin’s. “We have hundreds of years of catching up to do.”


End file.
